Arthur Vance opened his eyes to the smell of burning birch wood, fresh cedar shavings. The rich, savory aroma of boiling cabbage-and-salted-beef broth.
The light in the room was not the harsh, blinding glare of an emergency running theater, nor was it the sickly green eerie glow of the underground foundries. It was the soft, golden warmth of late afternoon sunlight filtering through high, leaded-glass casement windows.
For a long moment, Arthur didn’t move. He lay perfectly still, performing a self-running, internal test inventory of his own physical body:
His headache had pulled back to a dull, rhythmic throb behind his left ear—manageable, consistent with a resolving blood-vessel deep bruise. His vision in both eyes was sharp and clear. The glassy heavy bleeding had cleared, leaving only a faint, harmless floater in his outer margin. His hands and feet responded normally to motor impulses, his fingers and toes tingling with returning tiny blood vessel warmth.
He was alive. Intact. Whole.
A heavy, comforting weight pinned his shins to the mattress.
Arthur tilted his head slightly. Stretched across the foot of the heavy oak bed, fast asleep, was Grimm. The Great Shadow Panther took up more than half the woolen blanket, his massive black head resting heavily across Arthur’s booted ankles. Grimm’s flanks rose and fell in a slow, steady beat, his four paws sometimes twitching against the linen as he chased phantom beasts in his dreams. An underground, purring rumble shook through the mattress, rattling the brass bed-posts with a…
